


the prospectus

by heartunsettledsoul, onceuponamirror, singsongsung, stillscape, sylwrites



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Grad School AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-18 20:01:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16125707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartunsettledsoul/pseuds/heartunsettledsoul, https://archiveofourown.org/users/onceuponamirror/pseuds/onceuponamirror, https://archiveofourown.org/users/singsongsung/pseuds/singsongsung, https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillscape/pseuds/stillscape, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylwrites/pseuds/sylwrites
Summary: Betty Cooper, Jughead Jones, and the elusive external committee member.A graduate school AU.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [village_skeptic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/village_skeptic/gifts).



> Happy birthday month to the lovely @village-skeptic! We all adore you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *chapter by singsongsung*

"Read, read, read. That's all I can say."  
\- Carolyn Keene,  _The Secret of the Old Clock_  

-

-

Twenty minutes before his alarm is set to go off, Jughead finds himself awake thanks to familiar fumes drifting into his nostrils and tugging him from slumber. He groans, burying his face in his pillow for a beat, and then shifts over on his mattress (which rests on the floor as a result of his persistent frugality never allowing him to make the plunge and buy a bedframe) and slams a sleep-weak fist halfheartedly against the wall.

“What did I say about opening your window when you’re using that stuff?” he calls, raising his voice in order to be heard above Stevie Nicks.

There’s some shuffling in the adjacent room, the sound of a door on creaky hinges opening, and then _his_ bedroom door opens to reveal his little sister, wearing her usual early-morning uniform of terrycloth shorts and an old, paint-splattered South Side High t-shirt and levelling him with an unimpressed look.

“ _My_ window is open,” she says, marching into the room. “The only reason it smells like rubber cement in here is because _your_ window isn’t open to facilitate air flow.”

“JB,” he sighs, rubbing a hand wearily over his face. “You can’t just barge into my room.”

“Why not?” she asks, heaving his window open and letting in the damp October chill. “It’s not like there’s ever anyone else in here.”

“Jelly, that’s not the - ”

“Oh my god,” his sister interrupts him, slamming a hand against her heart as if she’s just suffered a scare. “Jug, what the fuck?”

He follows her gaze to the cork board above his desk, wincing slightly. It is, admittedly, a mess, covered with index cards upon which he’s written out key ideas, printed article abstracts, the occasional pertinent still from a film, and even a few coffee shop napkins that he’s covered with scribbled flashes of inspiration he was afraid to forget, all of which are connected in various places by strokes of sharpie.

“Scratch that,” Jellybean says. “It’s not that you just _don’t_ bring anyone back here, it’s that you _can’t_. Jesus, Jughead. It looks like you’re either a serial killer or you’re trying to catch one.”

“Hopefully the latter,” he mutters, and his sister (his _baby_ sister) gives him a downright pitying look before she heads back to her own room.

She leaves his door open behind her, of course, and Jughead stares morosely at the parquet that lines the thin hallway’s floors. He can hear the sizzle of a frying pan, and the smell of bacon begins to intermingle with the tang of acetone drifting out of Jellybean’s room.

After a moment, he drags his gaze over to the cork board and feels a familiar pit open up in his stomach. He loves his sister deeply, and there are some things that only Jellybean can understand about him, like how it feels to grow up trapped in a tiny trailer with a depressed and disenchanted mother and an alcoholic father who couldn’t seem to communicate without things escalating into a screaming match, but when it comes to _this_ , to the current greatest stressor in his life, the project that is meant to be career-defining, Jellybean doesn’t quite get it.

Five years ago, when Jughead was slogging his way through his third year of his undergraduate degree and Jellybean was still in high school, he got an A from his favourite professor and a glowing comment on his paper that ended with _have you considered continuing on in grad school?_ and it came into startling focus for him: his brain, which had been the source of much teasing through his public school career, could _get_ him somewhere. His brain could be a ticket to a better life. So he scraped together his savings to pay for application fees, and he ended up here, at UW.

He entered graduate school with a level of optimism he rarely allowed himself, which was why reality ultimately felt like a brutal smack in the face. Academic jobs, particularly secure ones, are few and far between, and in the rest of the world, his PhD might end up being more of a hindrance than an advantage. His brain isn’t enough, not by a long shot. He needs connections to influential branches of the scholarly world, connections that will lead to a carefully placed word here and a significant recommendation there within the hallowed halls of the ivory tower, and he needs a dissertation that will enable him to make and solidify those connections.

Which is, in short, why his efforts to plan out his prospectus look like a murder board.

His prospectus - the twenty-odd page document that outlines his plan of study - needs to prove that he's pinpointed a direction for his scholarship, done all the appropriate preliminary research, read and understood the key theoretical texts in his field,  _and_ that he's poised to make a meaningful contribution to said field. The resulting pressure has turned his brain into something he can apparently only organize one scribbled thought at a time. 

His concentration is pulled away from his cork board by the sound of his alarm blaring rudely from his phone's speaker; Jughead silences it and hauls himself out of bed, heading into the bathroom to shower. As he rinses shampoo out of his hair, he decides that today is the day. It has to be - he’s put it off for long enough, getting buried in his insecurities over and over again. He’s ninety percent (okay, eighty percent) certain of how he’s going to frame his prospectus, which means he can go talk to Dr. Wolfe.

Dr. Wolfe is the most important connection he could possibly make, an acclaimed scholar whose input as a member of Jughead’s dissertation committee would be invaluable. If he can get Wolfe to agree to be one of the three to five academics in the world who are actually  _guaranteed_ to read his dissertation, and if he can make enough of an impression that it wouldn't be completely unthinkable to ask the professor to act as one of his references, then he might actually stand a chance on the job market. The catch - unsurprisingly - is that Wolfe is very busy, very much in demand, and allegedly very picky about his grad students, and now, in the fourth week of the semester, Jughead is starting to have anxiety dreams about some other straight-A student with a brilliant dissertation proposal beating him to the punch.

“You can do this,” he murmurs into the steamy cocoon of the shower, and then cringes at the fact that he’s now delivering pep talks to himself and turns the water off. He shakes out his hair, not unlike his old dog Hot Dog, who is now chasing squirrels in the great field in the sky, and grabs a towel.

After pulling on jeans, a plain grey t-shirt, and a sweater, he heads into the main living space of the apartment with a pair of socks in hand. “Morning, Jug,” comes the greeting from behind the half-wall that separates the dining area and the kitchen.

“Morning,” Jughead replies, dropping down into a chair at the table to put his socks on. 

FP sticks his head around the corner. “Eggs and bacon?” he offers, as if the answer could possibly be no.

“Yeah,” Jughead says. Not once in his thirteen years of education in the public school system did it even occur to his father to make his children breakfast; the fact that now, in Jughead’s third year of his doctorate, FP has developed a serious investment in the morning meal as the most important one of the day is strange, to say the least. But, Jughead figures, as he so often does with his father: better late than never.

“Thanks, Dad,” he adds as a plate, slightly scratched and with a singular chip in its side, makes its way onto the table in front of him.

-  
-  
-  
-

All three members of the Jones clan leave the apartment at the same time, coffee thermoses in hand. Jellybean flounces off in her somewhat incongruous outfit of a Tegan and Sara t-shirt, tie-dye skirt, and leather jacket while Jughead and FP turn left and begin the eleven-block trek to UW’s campus.

“Are you hanging in there, Dad?” Jughead asks, watching his father gulp down black coffee. It’s still utterly bizarre to see his dad wearing a backpack. “I know midterms are coming up.”

“Yeah, yeah,” FP says. “Really only worried about psychology. We move through slides faster than my brain can think.”

“Science isn’t exactly my strength either,” Jughead commiserates.

“Or JB’s,” his father points out. There’s a beat of silence, falling heavy between them. “Wonder how your mom would’ve done.”

Jughead swallows down a mouthful of coffee that suddenly tastes particularly bitter. “No point in wondering something we’ll never know,” he says. He hasn’t seen his mother in nearly two decades - she left when he and his sister were kids and didn’t bother coming back when his father went to jail.

He can feel his father looking at him. FP’s been doing that a lot, since he got out - eyeing his children, studying them carefully, trying to make all the right moves. Part of Jughead appreciates it as part of the new leaf FP seems to have very firmly turned over, and part of him finds it frustrating. He was forced to grow up fast by his mother’s abandonment and his father’s prison sentence; he can handle the truth, even when it’s ugly.

“Journalism doesn’t even have a midterm,” FP says, clearly having decided to drop the subject of Gladys.

Jughead’s brows quirk together in faint amusement. “You seem to really be liking that course.”

“It’s interesting. Didn’t realize, before, that more goes into reporting a story than just saying what happened.”

“Are you gonna become a newspaper columnist, Dad?” Jughead jokes. “That’ll make all three of us nice and underpaid.”

FP chuckles and begins talking about how difficult he’s finding it to decide on a major, and Jughead is listening, he is - until he catches a flash of something bright across the street and finds his eyes drawn toward it.

The brightness turns out to be a yellow ponytail turned gold in the morning sun that’s valiantly peeking out between the clouds, swaying jauntily side-to-side behind a girl who looks like the poster child for the collegiate experience: three books tucked into the crook of one arm, collar starched perfectly on a pale blue blouse dotted with tiny white flowers, a pair of jeans that hug her legs all the way down to the ankle. Noticing her is not a surprise - having spent the past year thinking about very little except for Alfred Hitchcock’s blondes, Jughead’s eyes are moths to the flames of flaxen hair.

The fact that she catches his eye is expected; the way he feels like he can’t look away definitely isn’t. She’s pretty. She has the look of someone whose parents went to university decades ago and are now spending their days contributing productively to society, rather than walking alongside their grown child toward a college campus, headed to classes as a fresh undergraduate after spending time in state prison. She’s about as far out of his league as a woman on the silver screen.

“You know, Jug?” his father says, finishing off a sentence, the beginning of which was totally lost to Jughead’s ears.

Nevertheless he says, “Yeah,” and he smiles at his father, at FP’s face so serious and thoughtful, at the expression of a man trying so hard to do right by himself and his children. “I know.”

-  
-  
-  
-

Jughead attends the lecture for the class he’s TAing, occasionally scribbling a note in his moleskine. He’s been Professor Sackville’s TA once before, so the material is somewhat familiar. This week they’re discussing _Taxi Driver_.

Once the students begin rustling around and Dr. Sackville has called out a reminder to watch _The Conversation_ for next week, practically yelling to be heard over everyone mumbling to each other and shoving laptops into their bags, she turns off her microphone and walks over to the front corner of the lecture hall's stadium-style seats, where Jughead has habitually parked himself. 

“Things going alright in your group?” she asks.

He nods, offering her a wry smile. “Things are going.”

She offers a knowing smile in return. “Let me know how grading the first essay goes. And let me know if there’s anything you get stuck on - you know the drill.”

“I do, Vicky,” he says, tucking his laptop into his messenger bag alongside his library copy of _The Women Who Knew Too Much._ “Thanks.”

“Best of luck with your prospectus,” she says, and her tone is warm and supportive, but the mention of his dissertation still causes his stomach to do one small flip.

“Thanks,” he says again. “See you next week.”

His discussion group is right after the lecture, so he speed-walks across campus to one of the older buildings in which students of the arts are often stuck, dealing with broken chairs and ancient projectors and the occasional emergence of mould.

Most of his students are already there, the majority looking preemptively bored. The one exception, as usual, is Candace Carver, who looks up from her iPad and throws him a polite smile when he walks in. She’s undoubtedly going to get at least an A-minus on the short essay due next week, and she’s the only student in his group who consistently demonstrates that she’s done the theoretical readings in addition to watching the week’s film. She reminds him of a younger version of himself so much it almost hurts: quiet until she grows passionate, eager to discover new directors and styles, enthralled by the terminology that she now has available at her fingertips to apply to things she’d already noticed in films.

Looking at Candace, sitting there in the front row, highlighted notes open in front of her, is like looking at a mirror image of his past self. Despite the shitty job market currently staring him down, he can’t help but encourage her, leaving detailed comments on her assignments, prompting her to say more even when she seems hesitant to raise her hand.

He can’t break Candace’s spirited interest. Not when he feels, most days, like he’s already letting down the version of himself that was once so much like her.

Were Jughead’s life a movie, the camera, as he sets up his powerpoint to guide the discussion for the hour, would zoom slowly in on his messenger bag, ominous extradiegetic music letting the audience know that his dissertation proposal is in there, impatiently waiting for him to improve it.

-  
-  
-  
-

For fifteen minutes after his discussion group technically ends, Jughead stands in the hallway surrounded by a gaggle of students who have urgent questions about their upcoming essay but who refuse to come to his office hour to have an unhurried and thorough conversation about their concerns. Once the last of the students wanders off, Jughead shoulders his messenger bag and lets his feet move, on autopilot, toward the library.

Campus is teeming with students, the weather still warm enough that they haven’t been chased into the HUB or pulled the blankets over their heads in the morning and decided to skip classes altogether. He passes a group of guys kicking a soccer ball around on a patch of grass, students smoking joints huddled together on a building’s steps, and as he crosses through the Red Square, weaving between slow-moving groups of people, he spots a group of students filming something, though he can’t discern if it’s for a class or an effort to get YouTube views.

He jogs up the steps of the library with the assurance of someone who’s been there a hundred times before. He’s seen undergrads blinking up at the imposing structure with something like terror in their eyes, but it’s the place on campus that Jughead feels most comfortable. As a child, libraries offered him unlimited stories, opportunity upon opportunity to escape to another land, to immerse himself in someone else’s world. During his brief stint of homelessness as a teenager, they were a safe place to sleep. And later on, when he decided he wanted a life different than the one he’d been born into, it was libraries, brimming with books and knowledge, that seemed to hold the key.

The reading room, with its old world vibe and its reverent silence, is typically his favourite place, but he decides today to opt for a small table on the library’s first floor, hoping that the buzz of conversation and the soft sounds of shuffling paper will give him just the right amount of productivity-inspiring background noise as he dives into his prospectus with the aim of finishing it once and for all.

The first thing he does after he’s settled into his chair is retrieve his old, worn beanie from his bag. There was a time when he wore it always, like a safety blanket, but now it’s more of a good luck charm - he’d never admit it to his sister and knows she’d tease him for the rest of his life if she knew, but he’s too suspicious to let go of the idea just yet. He was wearing the beanie when he opened his offer letter from UW. He wore the beanie on the way to both of his comprehensive exams. He wore it the day he went to pick up his newly-liberated father from prison.

He’s just pulled out his laptop, his books, his notebook, and the energy bar he’s desperately craving, when he catches sight of a familiar tweed blazer. His head shoots up, and sure enough - there is Dr. Wolfe, striding through the library carrying several folders stuffed full of paper. Staring at the professor as he walks toward the library’s doors, Jughead has the sudden and terrifying sensation that he’s watching his future walk away.

On impulse, he yanks off his beanie and leaps up from his desk, not even sparing a thought for the security of the Macbook he saved up to buy, used, in his second year of undergrad. He forces himself to speed-walk rather than run, and says, when he’s at the professor’s elbow, “Dr. Wolfe!” in the friendliest voice he’s ever able to muster.

Wolfe turns toward him and looks at him over bifocal frames. “Hello there,” he says, not unpleasantly, but his thick brows furrow as he clearly attempts to put a name to Jughead’s face.

“Jughead Jones,” he offers quickly. “I’m a PhD student in the English program. I believe we met at, uh, Dr. Sackville’s holiday gathering last year? You mentioned then that you were working on your _Film Quarterly_ article. Your take was completely unprecedented - it made me rethink some parts of my dissertation.” As soon as the words leave his mouth, Jughead regrets them. Does he really want a potential committee member like Wolfe to think that he’s still uncertain about his thesis?

“Thank you, Mr. Jones,” Wolfe says, his tone entirely neutral. “We are all always learning.”

“Yes,” Jughead agrees, probably too eagerly. He takes a deep breath, steeling himself to mention that he’s planning to stop by Wolfe’s office hours later in the day to discuss the dissertation that is the product of his eternal learning curve, but before he gets even a single syllable out, Wolfe catches the eye of another professor, and Jughead knows in an instant that his chance has been lost.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Wolfe says, already moving away. “I need to speak with Dr. Forster. Best of luck in your studies.”

“Thank you,” Jughead says, holding his sigh in until Wolfe is safely out of earshot and then releasing it as he squeezes his eyes shut, frustrated with himself.

He plods back to his table - his laptop is still there, untouched, which is probably a miracle - feeling much less optimistic about nailing down his proposal than he did minutes ago. Pushing his notebook aside, he decides to allow himself a few minutes to mope as he rewatches some pivotal scenes from the movies he’s studying, which will hopefully also serve to re-energize him.

As the eponymous birds of the first film he's chosen flap their wings forebodingly behind the opening credits, he shoves his beanie back onto this head morosely and slowly slumps back into his chair.

He wonders if it’s downright creepy or merely weird that Hitchcock films provide him with comfort.

He remembers the pitying look JB gave him that morning, and can’t help but think that maybe he deserved it.

 

* * *

 

Betty Cooper cannot believe she’s chasing a man.

Her mother might have a host of parenting flaws, but Alice Cooper raised her daughters to be feminists, and Betty has never run after a boy, painfully eager for him to notice her, certain that her life would fall apart without him in it. Even as a child, in the midst of her ill-fated crush on the cute boy who lived next door, Betty never did an ounce of chasing.

And yet: here she is, in the library café, dawdling by the milk and sugar station despite the fact that if she empties one more package of stevia into her coffee it’ll be far too sweet to drink, waiting for a man to appear so that she can get his attention.

Because she took one of Dr. Wolfe’s seminars in the first year of her PhD, she knows that he won’t show up to facilitate discussion without a venti dark roast in hand. So here she waits, sliding a cardboard sleeve onto her tall almond milk latte at a near-glacial pace, hoping that he shows up soon so that she can curry a little favour before she heads to his office hour later in the day to approach him about sitting on her dissertation committee.

She needs Dr. Wolfe on her committee. _Needs_ him.

She effectively grew up on UW’s campus, playing hopscotch in the Red Square with Polly, wandering hallways and peering at the political cartoons professors posted on their doors that she was too young to fully understand, doing her third-grade homework in the library’s reading room and imagining she was Hermione Granger at Hogwarts, learning to cast spells. Her parents are both tenured professors, so that had seemed like the obvious path for her as well, especially considering how deeply she’d always loved literature.

It was only once she returned to UW for grad school after doing her undergrad at Barnard and her master’s at NYU that she realized _just_ how different the academic climate in which she’s pursuing her degree is from the one her parents initially studied, published, and applied for jobs in. Positions - particularly steady positions - are rare, and competition is cutthroat. If Betty wants to succeed, if she wants to be the daughter her parents want and the academic she _knows_ she can be, she needs someone like Wolfe, respected and well-connected, in her corner.

He finally materializes while Betty is pretending to check her texts. Dr. Wolfe always dresses like he just walked off Oxford’s campus in the 1940s; it’s a classic professorial look she wishes her father and his ill-fitting sweaters would adopt.

“Professor Wolfe,” she says brightly when he makes his way over to the milk and sugar station to get a lid for his cup. “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” he responds.

“Betty Cooper,” she says, placing a hand lightly at the base of her throat as she introduces herself. “I’m doing my PhD in Comparative Lit. I took your course on digital humanities in my first year; it was great.”

He nods and looks at her again, for longer this time. “Alice’s daughter?” he asks.

Within her smile, Betty’s teeth clench, but she keeps her voice full of pep when she says, “That’s me.”

“Your mother must be proud of you,” he says. “Though, knowing Alice, I suppose fiction is a bit fantastical for her tastes.”

“A bit,” Betty agrees neutrally as her jaw starts to hurt. “Though I’m very interested in its real-world impacts. That’s actually what my disserta - ”

“Excuse me!” a voice says, and suddenly an undergraduate student appears between them, carrying a pumpkin spice latte and reaching for the cinnamon to add some atop the drink’s pile of whipped cream.

“Nice to see you, Polly,” Dr. Wolfe says to Betty, picking up his coffee cup and moving away. “Enjoy your semester.”

“You too,” she replies softly, watching him go with one corner of her mouth twisted downward.

This, Betty supposes, is what happens when your perfect older sister joins a cult and you fall in line by joining what is effectively the family business. You become perfect, but you’re never the one who’s remembered.

-  
-  
-  
-

Once she’s purchased a blueberry scone to soothe her disappointment, Betty makes her way to her office. As she’s heading for the library doors, she catches sight of Wolfe again, this time carrying folders of paper - probably handouts for his seminar students. She’s too embarrassed to approach him again just yet, which is probably for the best, because as the thought crosses her mind she watches a guy with slightly-dishevelled hair all but fling himself out a chair and half-run over to Wolfe in order to fall into step with the professor.

 _At least I’m not the only desperate one,_ Betty thinks, but half a second later her throat starts feeling anxiety-tight. With every new desperate grad student, her chances of getting Wolfe on her committee grow smaller.

Her cramped, windowless office is in Padelford Hall. One of the chairs is held together almost entirely with duct tape, and there are posters on the wall advertising graduate conferences that date back to the ’80s.

When she arrives, Val is there, bent over her laptop and wearing the look of over-caffeinated defeat that Betty catches very often on the faces of her fellow students.

“Hey,” Val says, straightening up and reaching for her mug of tea - Betty can smell peppermint. “How’d your mission go?”

“Not great,” Betty says, sitting in her desk chair gingerly so it won’t fall apart beneath her. “Obviously I didn’t expect him to remember me as his student, but he _did_ remember that I was my mother’s daughter.”

“That could be a good thing, right?” Val asks with her usual gentle optimism. “I mean, he knows who you are.”

“Yeah.” Betty holds her paper bag out to Val, who reaches into it and breaks off a little piece of the scone. “But I - I _know_ everything is about nepotism, but I don’t want him to decide to take me on or _not_ to take me on because of who my mother is. I feel like my project has worth. I want him to think that, too.” She sighs. “That’s stupid, isn’t it?”

“No,” Val says. “Of course you believe in your project, Betty. You’ve invested so much time and energy into it.”

“But will that time and energy mean anything if it’s something no one ever reads and that doesn’t help me at all on the job market?” Betty muses aloud, resting her chin in her palm. “I’m probably being naïve. It doesn’t really matter why Wolfe sits on my committee, just that he does.”

“You’ll get him, B. Or you’ll get someone just as good.”

Betty throws Val a smile. It’s a lie, but it’s a kind one. She knows there _are_ other professors she could ask, but Betty’s not a plan B kind of girl. She’s plan A all the way.

Val stretches her arms up over her head, tilting her neck toward each of her shoulders to stretch out her muscles. “Your discussion group’s this evening, right?”

“Yeah,” Betty says with a nod. “I have a pretty good group this semester.”

“I’m jealous,” Val sighs. “None of my students want to talk.”

Betty makes a sympathetic face. “We’re not quite halfway through the term. They might still warm up.”

“Maybe,” Val agrees, though her expression indicates doubt. She shuts her laptop and reorganizes the pile of response papers she was grading so that they’re in a neat stack. “I’ve got to go do some photocopying. Should I take my key or will you be here?”

“I’ll be here,” Betty says; her goal today is to work on her dissertation’s introduction, so that she’ll be able to tell Dr. Wolfe that she’s not only completed her prospectus but already jumped in to the writing process.

“Have fun,” Val says with a wry wiggle of her eyebrows. She hauls two giant anthologies into her slim arms and uses her hip to nudge the office door open on her way out.

Betty opens up her laptop and checks her e-mail while she finishes her scone, finding a call for papers, a notification that the department’s administrative assistant is out of the office for the next two days, an email from a student about citation styles, and two e-mails from her graduate association reminding everyone of the upcoming interdepartmental mixer. She puts the mixer in her calendar, replies to her student, and reviews the call for papers briefly to confirm that it’s not really relevant to her field.

She reaches up onto the shelf by her desk and takes down her copy of _Honey-Mad Women_ , thumbing its pages absently. She’s the only one to take it out from the library in the past ten years, and she’s certain that means something, that that fact alone identifies some of the issues she’s trying to explore in her dissertation.

She opens the document labelled _Intro - Diss_ and skims quickly over what she’s written so far. Then she flips to the first purple sticky-note in the book, and gets to work.

-  
-  
-  
-

Wolfe’s office hours begin at three-thirty. Betty intends to arrive at his door at three-forty, not wanting to look like too much of a keener - but all the nervous energy in her body causes her to walk across campus more quickly than she normally would, and she arrives at the building that houses his office at three twenty-six.

She decides _screw it_ and opts not to hover near a glass case full of recent faculty populations, letting her feet carry her down the hallway toward Wolfe’s office instead. She can be exactly on time; she can even be early. It shows commitment.

She rolls her shoulders back - the TED Talk she watched once on power poses really sunk in - and makes her way toward the office where her fate will be decided with the faux-leather folder she always puts papers in for important meetings tucked under her arm.

 _You can do this, Betty,_ she tells herself. _You got the Archer grant. Your supervisor said -_

Both her internal pep talk and her footsteps stutter when she spots a figure coming down the hallway from its opposite end, moving toward her. The figure - a man - looks to be a student as well, judging by the over-ear headphones resting around his neck. Betty prepares to give him a small, polite smiling of greeting-slash-commiseration before leaning against a wall to keep vigil at Wolfe’s door.

But - when she reaches the office door, the man does, too. And he stops, just like she does. He blinks at her, his blue eyes a surprising flash of light between his dark hair and his almost-scowl.

“Here for Dr. Wolfe’s office hours?” she asks. She notes that he’s also carrying a folder, a paper one, but doesn’t allow herself to think about its significance.

“Yeah.” He checks his watch. “Looks like I’m early.”

“So am I.” Betty’s most pleasant smile curls onto her lips automatically. “I guess we’re over-eager.”

He nods slowly, narrowing his eyes at her briefly and regarding her with such intensity that she has the sudden urge to ask if there’s something in her teeth. Then he says, “Are you taking his seminar?”

“No. Well - I did, a couple years ago. I’m in my third year now. PhD,” she adds, lest he think she’s an undergrad, an assumption that’s been lobbed her way more often than she’d like to admit.

“Me too,” he says.

“Oh.” Betty’s heart gives two hard, fast beats before she takes a breath deep enough to calm its cadence. “In English? I don’t think I’ve seen you around.”

“Yeah,” he confirms. “You?”

“Comparative Literature,” she replies, and hesitates for only a second before she adds, “But I really should be in your department. My dissertation has ended up focusing only on American, English-language texts.”

He doesn’t quite smile, but his mouth shifts out of its quasi-frown. “And I should be in yours. I’m doing film studies.”

“What’s your project?” she asks, genuine curiosity overriding her suspicions regarding his presence.

His shoulders shift around a bit under his sweater, like that’s not a question he’s quite comfortable answering. “Hitchcock’s small towns,” he tells her after a beat of silence.

“Sounds interesting,” Betty replies, even as her heart _thump_ s again. Wolfe is well-known for his work in auteur theory.

“You?”

It takes her a moment to understand that he’s asking about her project. “Monstrous women,” she says. “Or, really - women who are treated like monsters.”

He nods, considering this, and then guesses, “Women with trauma?”

Betty’s eyebrows shoot up briefly. “Women with agency,” she says. “The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”

Lips flicking, for an instant, into a real smile, he tells her, “Touché.”

Betty’s own lips feel dry, and she skims her tongue over them briefly. It _must_ be three-thirty, but there’s still no sign of Wolfe. “You want him on your committee,” she says, hugging her folder to her chest. “Wolfe. Don’t you?”

The man standing across from her leans a shoulder against the wall. “And so do you,” he answers. It isn’t a question.

“Well,” Betty manages after she swallows down this new and potentially plan-altering knowledge. “If we’re lucky, he’ll have room for both of us in his schedule.”

Eyes on the floor, he says, “I’m sure a girl like you is used to being _lucky_.”

Her frown is instantaneous; she can feel her eyelids moving downward into an angered stare. “What is _that_ supposed to mean?”

He waves a hand toward her. “You look like you just walked off a shiny page in some college’s catalogue. I’m sure the ivory tower wasn’t exactly hard for you to climb.”

Betty’s jaw drops. “You don’t get to make assumptions about me just because you’re upset that you have competition,” she says, even though his assumptions are admittedly pretty spot-on. “What is it - you can’t handle your success being threatened by a woman?”

He straightens, his mouth falling open in turn. “Are you implying that I’m _not a feminist_ just because I can tell when someone was born with a silver spoon in their mouth? Who’s making assumptions now?”

“ _Silver spoon_?” Betty demands, but before she can say anything more, the door at the end of the hall swings open on its noisy hinges, and Wolfe begins bustling toward them, briefcase in one hand.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says, rummaging in his pocket for his keys. “I can never seem to find parking these days. Now - who was here first?”

“I was,” Betty says sunnily, without missing a beat - and she’s surprised to hear the other student (whose name, she realizes, she still doesn’t know), murmur, “She was,” at the same time.

“Come on in, then, Ms. Cooper,” Wolfe says, and despite the jealousy she can _feel_ in the air at the fact that Dr. Wolfe knows her name, Betty walks into the office without sparing her competition another glance.

-  
-  
-  
-

Her pitch to Wolfe goes well enough. He nods along to everything she says and accepts a copy of her prospectus to read over. He says that he’ll give joining her committee some thought, which was exactly the response she expected, but she still leaves feeling the old, familiar sink of imposter syndrome in her stomach.

Betty’s discussion group is at seven, so she gets a slice from Pagliacci Pizza for dinner and eats it alone in her office, her headphones in her ears as she attempts to distract herself with a silly high school soap opera on Netflix. It doesn’t quite work - watching the camera pan over a small town scene reminds her of that other student and his damn Hitchcock dissertation.

Nevertheless, she gets her head on straight by the time she needs to go discuss Agatha Christie with her first-year students. There is no one in the classroom ahead of her group, so she gets there early, sets up her powerpoint presentation, and flicks through the play one last time to make a final decision about which excerpt she wants to prompt some (potentially coerced) volunteers to read aloud.

Her students trickle in slowly, most of them clutching cups of coffee like they contain a precious nectar without which they will not survive the next ninety minutes. Betty waits an extra couple minutes for the stragglers to arrive, and then asks if any of her students have questions about their upcoming essay.

Her only mature student raises his hand right away. Betty double-checks her class list very quickly - she’s almost got everyone’s name down, but she doesn’t want to make a mistake - and then smiles at him.

“Go ahead, FP,” she says.

-  
-  
-  
-

to be continued. 


	2. Chapter 2

 

"I only write when I feel an urgency, which is often." _  
-_ Ann M. Martin,  _Mallory and the Mystery Diary_

-

-

“Why are we at the table?”

Jughead looks up from his noodle bowl and glares at his sister, whose confused and somewhat bored expression immediately irks him. “Because it’s dinnertime, and we’re eating dinner,” he informs her flatly.

Jellybean shrugs and frowns across her vermicelli. “We usually eat in the living room.”

 _“You_ usually eat in the dining room,” Jughead points out. “That doesn’t mean that the rest of us do.”

She huffs and looks vaguely disdainful. “This is so creepily domestic, Jughead.”

FP pipes up from the end of the small apartment-sized table. “I kinda like it.”

Jughead ignores him. He puts his chopsticks down and glares at Jellybean a second time. “Nobody is forcing you to stay here, JB. Just like nobody is forcing you to eat this food even though I fucking paid for it. So make a decision.”

She lifts her palms in surrender. “Whoa, calm down Betty Crocker,” she soothes, her voice full of enough sarcasm to let Jughead know that she couldn’t have cared less whether he calmed down. “Who pissed in your corn flakes?”

“Fuck off, Daria,” he hisses, annoyed. He returns to glowering into his takeout. He can see Wolfe walking away from him in the back of his head, clear as day even if it did happen a few days earlier, his tweed blazer practically fluttering in the fucking breeze created by the closing of the library doors, leaving decidedly _without_ agreeing to be on Jughead’s committee, and he can see the swish of the spoiled blonde girl’s ponytail as she’d slid into Wolfe’s office ahead of him and then had proceeded to occupy all of his office hours.

Jellybean seems to have decided that whatever is bothering him is best left to its own devices, because her voice is uncharacteristically bright when she asks, “Dad, how was school today?”

His ears perk up, eager to hear the answer; ever since his father started college - a new leaf, he’d called it, which Jughead really hopes is from a completely different kind of tree than wherever all of the past _new leaves_ had come from before - he’s lived with a sort of base level of not unrelated anxiety. It’s an odd fact, he thinks, this concept that he could theoretically be in a position of authority over his father academically at any point, if FP were to sign up for his discussion group (and if, of course, he was somehow able to circumvent the very established rules at his institution that would prevent that from happening).

It’s perhaps a stranger - and more burdensome - feeling still to think that this might be his dad’s final opportunity at a good life, the last chance of a man who’s squandered enough of those to fill three lifetimes.

Jughead wants him to succeed. He really, really does.

“It was good,” FP replies, his words slightly muffled by the food in his mouth. He chews a bit, swallows, then continues. “I was having some problems with one of my readings for English.”

Jughead raises his head. “Yeah? You need me to look at anything?”

FP shakes his head. “No thanks, son. Elizabeth really helped me out.”

Jughead nods and eats another mouthful of noodles. He’s not familiar with Elizabeth, but he also doesn’t know everyone in the lit department, so it’s not a surprise. Despite that, he finds himself filled with gratitude for her, that she would take what Jughead assumes is a significant amount of extra time to help out her oldest student - not only to help him adjust to school after so many years away but also to help him understand the material. As someone who’s been a student for many years - and is now on the other side of the equation as a teaching assistant - he knows that that kind of generosity with time and attention is not always a given.

“That’s good to hear,” Jellybean puts in encouragingly.

“Thanks, kids.” FP sounds proud when he says it, and the inflection in his voice is almost enough to make Jughead cry.

“Hope tomorrow goes good for you too, Dad,” Jughead agrees. He offers a brief but supportive smile to his father before he starts to chew on the inside of his lower lip, already ruminating on the upcoming day. _Tomorrow._ It’s the day of an event that is both one of his least favourite things and one of his last chances to snare Wolfe to be on his committee: the interdepartmental mixer. He must get Wolfe’s attention there, if it’s the last thing he does, and it _has_ to go well.

-  
-  
-  
-

Ron Howard may as well be here narrating Jughead’s life, because it is _not_ going well.

The first problem is that he’s here at all. He’s here for Wolfe, only Wolfe, and nothing but Wolfe, so help him god, because Jughead despises interdepartmental mixers. He can think of nothing he’d like to do less than stand around in one of the many useless atriums at the university, eating bad appetizers and trying to make pointless conversation with other grad students, whose projects he frankly could not care about less.

The second problem is that Wolfe isn’t even _here._ He’s late, which is nearly soul-crushing, because Jughead had to postpone an online video-game session with Archie for this terrible event, and if Wolfe doesn’t show up soon then it’ll have all been for naught.

 _And,_ his fucking sweater is itchy. It’s usually fine, but he’d ran out of clean undershirts a day earlier, and only after wearing it for an hour with no fabric barrier to his skin did Jughead begin to understand why he’d never done so before. Plus, he’s wearing it beneath a sort of homely, equally uncomfortable tweed blazer that his father had given him out of extreme, endearing earnestness. He’d bought it secondhand but in good condition, selected probably because it looks like the kind of thing the asshole from _Good Will Hunting_ would wear, and _he_ won the Field’s Medal, after all, and Jughead had been unable to say no to the hopeful look in FP’s eyes.

(He might kind of like it, but strictly in an ironic way, of course.)

Jughead is on his third glass of wine, which is neither an alcohol that he regularly consumes nor one that he particularly enjoys, when he spots the blonde girl from the other day. _Ms. Cooper,_ Wolfe had called her. He has a few other choice names, too.

“Marion Crane,” he mutters under his breath instinctively. That prompts a quick and uneasy thought: _w_ _ho does that make you, Jughead?_

He decides that that is perhaps something to unpack later, preferably on his couch with a bag of chips or a takeout burger. Then, before he can think better of it, he walks up to Ms. Cooper and interrupts the conversation that she’s having with a truly boring-looking guy who Jughead recognizes as being in sociology. _Good god._

“Waiting for Wolfe?” he asks semi-loudly, ignoring the offended look that Boring Guy gives him. Jughead thrusts his eyebrows toward him by means of response, and the sociologist walks away.

Ms. Cooper turns to look at the intruder and smiles a little as she recognizes him. “Hi,” she greets. “We didn’t properly meet last time. I’m Betty.”

Jughead’s instincts kick in, and he shakes her offered hand. “Jughead Jones,” he states flatly. “Yes, it’s a weird name, no I don’t want to talk about it.”

Betty raises her eyebrows. “Wasn’t going to ask.”

 _Whatever,_ Jughead thinks. Everyone asks sooner or later. She's not special. “So, waiting for Wolfe?” he repeats.

She shrugs at first, and then at his glare, concedes. He notes that she has the good grace to look slightly sheepish. “Maybe. I thought I’d follow up on the conversation that we had the other day.”

“I remember that,” Jughead hisses. “You fucked me over, you know. You took up his entire office hours.”

Betty looks affronted. “He was late. That’s not my fault.”

“You know exactly what you were doing,” he counters. “And you might’ve taken my chance to talk to him. I _need_ him on my committee.”

He doesn’t know if he’d expected her to back off at this point, but she doesn’t, and if he weren’t so angry he would probably be impressed. “Well, sorry, but so do I.”

The doors from outside open, pre-empting whatever response Jughead hadn’t prepared for Betty’s retort, and Dr. Wolfe walks in, already looking at his watch. Without a second word to her, Jughead leaves Betty’s side and strides straight across the room to him, his wine left on a table and his hand already out.

“Dr. Wolfe!” he greets, stepping up to him. “Have a second?”

-  
-  
-  
-

It goes _okay._

He’s left with what Jughead assumes to be an oft-repeated “I’ll consider your proposal, Mr. Jones,” which is probably as good as can be expected. Wolfe had looked truly exhausted at Jughead’s first mention of Hitchcock, but he’d seemed _just slightly_ excited by the film studies proposal more broadly, so Jughead chooses to cling onto that for rest of the week.

He even goes back to the table with his wine on it and drinks the rest, hoping that it’s the same glass he’d abandoned before, then goes to get in line for a celebratory fourth. By the time he’s made it to the front and dropped a dollar into the tip jar - free alcohol is nice, he supposes, but he feels perpetually weird about the service aspect of it all - Wolfe has already left again.

Jughead spots Betty Cooper by the window, also nursing a near-empty glass of wine. Judging by the disappointed look on her face, she hadn’t been one of the three people that Wolfe had spoken to.

 _You were!,_ he reminds himself, but he still feels sort of bad, so he orders a second glass of wine and heads toward her.

She sits down as he approaches, carefully crossing her legs, and when he arrives she’s preoccupied with adjusting her charcoal cardigan, which is buttoned all the way to the top. She’s pretty, he thinks. He’d noticed before, of course, but his stress over talking to Wolfe had been nearly blinding, and it seemed to fall to the back side of importance with all of the other facts of life.

Jughead thrusts the glass of wine toward her and attempts a sheepish smile. “Olive branch?”

Betty glances up. She sees the wine, takes it, and returns his smile with a grateful nod. “I guess we’re even now.” She gestures to the worn armchair across from her. “Wanna sit down?”

He does, sinking into it with a slight wince at the way the springs poke at his back, even through his godforsaken blazer.

She laughs, lightly. “Not comfortable, hey?”

“Not in the slightest,” Jughead reports cheerfully. “But that’s okay, that’s why I wore _two_ layers of uncomfortable fabric.”

“Of course, you’ve gotta double down on your unhappiness.”

He grins. “Behind every successful academic is deeply-rooted self-loathing, or so I’m told.”

That makes her laugh again. “Is it tweed?”

He makes a face; half at her, half at himself. “Maybe.” His eyes settle on her skirt, which falls to an appropriate length above her knees but is just long enough to definitely not be the kind of thing that his sister would wear, and he points to it. “Is that wool?”

Betty tips her wine glass in his direction as if to say, _touché._ Her free hand smoothes over her skirt. “I try to channel my grandmother a little bit, or else I get confused for an undergrad.”

Jughead nods and gestures to his face solemnly. “I highly recommend the dark circles,” he says. “Nobody challenges me on my age.”

Betty tilts her head in understanding and raises her glass up a few inches. “To defying expectations,” she offers.

He does the same. “I’ll drink to that,” he agrees. Jughead takes a long sip, then makes a face and sets the glass down again. “This tasted better before.”

“You were nervous before,” she points out.

Jughead feigns awe. “What you’re saying is, I used alcohol as a sort of social lubricant,” he says, intentionally slowly. “Wow. I mean, it worked, maybe. I should get into the liquor business before anyone else finds out the secret.”

Betty chuckles and uncrosses her legs. It’s October in the Pacific Northwest, so she’s wearing tights. The’re somewhat sheer, Jughead notices, not opaque like most others he sees girls wearing.

She also has nice legs. He notices that too.

Jughead swallows his thoughts and stands up, deciding that if Wolfe is gone then he can take this blazer off. It helps a little with how badly he’s overheating, so even if what he really wants to do is go home and change entirely, he does feel a little more comfortable.

Betty is looking at him when he sits back down, and just as Jughead opens his mouth to say something, her cheeks redden. “Nice sweater,” she tells him.

He laughs a little. “I can’t tell if that’s sarcasm or not,” he confesses, touching his shirt self-consciously. It’s a dark green knit sweater, thick and still one of the nicer things he owns despite its age. He doesn’t get a lot of comments on his outfits, positive or otherwise, and he’s not entirely sure what the appropriate response is.

“It looks good on you,” Betty assures him.

Jughead stares at her. She’s giving him a little smile. The apples of her cheeks are still flushed and her eyelashes flutter ever-so-slightly with what seems almost like nerves. She’s very, very pretty, he recognizes, so pretty that it would be disarming if she didn’t also seem so … _nice._

He should probably excuse himself and go home now that he’s achieved what he set out to do and is almost done with his wine, but instead, he blurts out, “Want to go for a walk?”

-  
-  
-  
-

Jughead doesn’t have a specific destination in mind when they begin strolling on campus grounds, but both the chill and the faint mist in the cold autumn air of the Pacific Northwest soon lead him to identify one. A coffee shop near his apartment comes to mind; it’s warm and caffeinated and thus comforting in his mind, a place that would surely take the bite out of the wet wind that seems to cut straight through multiple layers to cool his skin.

He wishes he’d brought a real jacket.

For her part, Betty had; it’s wool like her skirt and dusty pink in colour, falls halfway to her knees, and seems warm enough for the first fifteen minutes of their walk. After that, she tugs it closer around her, and he knows that she’s feeling the chill as well.

“So what made you want to go into academia?” Jughead asks.

The response is automatic and almost robotic. “My parents are academics.”

He’d expected that answer - it’s written all over her - but he raises an eyebrow slightly anyway at the way she’d replied. “The apple doesn’t fall far, I guess?”

Betty looks up at him, gives a little sigh, and shrugs. “Sorry, I - I don’t know, I hate that question. Why do we do anything, really? It seemed like the thing I was supposed to do.”

“My parents are criminals of varying levels of delinquency,” Jughead offers. This particular truth has been easier to divulge since his father’s new leaf has been turned. “You don’t have to follow a pre-determined path.”

“I know that, Jughead.” She sounds mildly annoyed, and he winces at the edge in her voice.

“Sorry, I -”

 _“I’m_ sorry,” Betty interrupts, shaking her head, apparently at herself. “It just cuts a little close to home - am I doing all of this for the right reasons, does this make me happy, all that. I do really like it. I like learning, I like writing, and a life lived on campus feels familiar, is what I suppose I meant. But anyway.” They come to a stop light, where a red _don’t walk_ sign is glowing warningly at them, and she looks up at him. “What did your parents do?”

He waves away the question. “Nothing murder-y, if that’s what you’re asking. They were both in a gang, and gangs aren’t exactly known for their strict adherence to the law. My mom fucked off a long time ago, though, and Dad is turning his life around.”

“That’s really nice.”

Jughead gives a laugh that he hopes doesn’t sound as hollow as it feels and looks away from her. “Nicer would be not doing bad shit to begin with.”

“I’m willing to assume that they didn’t have the best start in life themselves,” Betty offers, gently putting a hand on Jughead’s forearm. “Cycles of poverty are painfully interwoven with cycles of violence and criminal behaviour.”

She’s not wrong. Jughead knows this, too. The difference is that Betty knows it from a textbook, and he knows it from his real life, from slamming doors and flashing lights and holidays spent in the visitors’ centre of a state prison facility.

“Yeah.” He clears his throat. “Anyway, this is a terrible conversation topic for a -” he stops himself from saying the word _date,_ because even though it kind of feels like one now, it’s not that, and instead adds “walk” somewhat lamely at the end.

To her credit, Betty doesn’t push it any further. Jughead watches the light turn green and the walk signal appear. He steps onto the street, only to be yanked backward by a forceful tug on the back of his blazer. A second later, a car streams by, with pounding loud bass and no regard for the red light now glowing behind it.

“Holy shit,” he breathes as he stumbles, finally catching himself on a nearby garbage can. He looks over at Betty, whose face reads just as shocked as he feels. Her fist slowly unclenches around the fabric of his clothing.

“Assholes,” she curses, gathering herself with a quick double-blink and a sniff into the cool night. “Some people shouldn’t have licenses.”

Jughead pants audibly, his heart still pounding as he nods. “Yeah,” he finally agrees. “Um. Thank you, Betty, for - I would’ve been roadkill.”

“Of course, I was just turned the right way, thank god.” Betty reaches over and rubs her hand along his upper arm. “Sorry, are you okay? I should’ve asked first thing -”

“I’m fine,” he assures her, reaching over and covering her hand with his. She’s wearing thin gloves but he can still feel her fingers trembling, and he squeezes them to still her movements. “Really.”

Betty nods with him. “Okay. Well, let’s - let’s double check the traffic,” she suggests with a weak laugh, “then cross.”

Jughead makes a big show out of looking both ways - _left, right, then left again,_ he can hear his mother chanting from years ago - then tugs her into the intersection. They reach the other side quickly and safely, but when he moves to let go of her hand, she hangs on.

He’s confused for a moment, until he looks at her and sees a red flush on her cheeks that he doesn’t think is entirely from the cold air. She’s smiling at him, her eyes kind but nervous, so he swallows, then threads their fingers together.

“You know, I think I actually want another drink, not coffee,” she says lightly, turning her face away from him and halfway down the block. “After that.”

Jughead follows her sightline and spots the sign for a bar whose open mic night Archie plays at every now and then. It’s not terrible as far as pubs go, featuring more of the dim lighting and good beers that he prefers rather than sporadically flashing lights and thumping beats, and he decides it’s a good option.

Betty’s hand tightens around his, and his brain underlines that. _Yeah,_ he thinks, _a great option._

They walk in and are immediately surrounded by warmth from both the atmosphere and the temperature. Jughead savours both, his body chilled enough by now and his eyes tired of the streetlights.

They choose two stools at the bar. It seems less permanent than a table, and given that this is really unprecedented territory - he’s never turned something completely sexless into a date before, which despite his earlier feelings this might actually be turning into. He shrugs his blazer off and takes Betty’s coat from her once she’s shedded it as well, then carries both a few steps away to a hook at the end of the dark mahogany bartop. He secures them, then returns to slide onto the stool beside Betty, who is in the middle of ordering herself a drink.

“For you?” the bartender asks, nodding his head at Jughead.

He glances at Betty briefly, intending to ask her what she’d ordered, but his mouth pauses halfway to opening when he notices lace. Pale blue lace, to be exact, the delicate-looking kind. It trims the top of the camisole she’s been wearing underneath her cardigan, which she’s apparently managed to smoothly unbutton in the last two and a half minutes. He inhales sharply through his nose and closes his mouth, forcing his eyes up to Betty’s face instead of her - _lace._

(She is not Marion, Jughead decides. She is Lisa Fremont, appearing like a dream, but he has a feeling that this girl does not trade her books for fashion magazines.)

She’s looking back at him with intention - intention for _what,_ he really doesn’t know, but he swears that her chest rises just slightly and then she bites her lip, her _fucking lip,_ and Jughead immediately turns to stare at the on-tap beer list.

“I’ll have the double IPA.”

The bartender gives him an amused look. “Alright, coming up.”

Jughead closes his eyes for a moment. Fuck, he’s one of those predictable loser guys now, isn’t he?

“I’m not really a fan of hops,” Betty’s voice says. “Must be an acquired taste.”

He opens his eyes. _Get a hold of yourself, jesus,_ his brain is saying.

“I wasn’t to start either,” he tells her, grateful for the brief interruption of the bartender bringing their drinks. She, it seems, drinks gin and tonics. “It grows on you, I think.”

“Hmm.” She seems to ruminate on this for a moment, then adds, “Like Aranofsky, or ... Tourneur?”

Jughead’s eyebrows shoot up. “Interesting combination you’re suggesting there.”

Betty grins. “Well, obviously Aranofsky’s had tremendous commercial success, but they’re both kind of … specific, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, I mean, _Mother!_ isn’t exactly for everyone, and neither is something like _Night of the Demon.”_ Jughead tilts his head at her and smiles. “Aranofsky’s sort of obvious, but I didn’t peg you for an old horror fan.”

“I pegged _you_ for one,” Betty shoots back playfully, tipping more of her drink into her mouth.

He laughs. “Low-hanging fruit, I am.”

She swivels on the stool and presses her knee against his. “Predictability can be comforting,” she says slowly, bringing her eyes to his again, “but surprises are good too.”

Jughead goes out on a limb, figuring he might as well lean into whatever magical experience this is that has a girl like Betty _flirting_ with him, and traps her legs between his. “Well, you’re full of surprises.”

“Then I guess I’m good too,” she says with a wink, before dissolving into giggles.

He laughs at her and mimes a slow clap. “That was really some line.”

She takes a long sip of her drink, swallows, then chuckles again. “Thanks, I’ve been thinking of it all night.” Jughead then watches with interest as she reaches over and takes his right hand, the one that’s not wrapped around a half-consumed pint of beer, and puts on her leg. She then raises her chin and meets his gaze with darkening green eyes.

Jughead’s mouth goes dry.

“That’s a _really_ nice sweater, Jughead,” she tells him.

“You already said that,” he stammers, hoping he sounds more confident than he feels. “And thank you again.”

She nods and ducks her head. She twists to the side to pick up and drink the rest of her gin and tonic, an action that causes her legs to part just far enough for his hand to fall between them. Before he can right it, she turns back and squeezes his hand between her thighs, now biting her goddamned lip again.

Then, somehow, Jughead hears himself saying, “I live nearby.”

And, _miraculously,_ she stands. “Then let’s pay up.”

 

* * *

 

There’s a hand on her breast.

It’s the very first thing that Betty registers when she wakes up, before being in an unfamiliar environment, before her slight headache, before the fact that she’s _naked:_ a hand, big and slender and distinctly male, cupped around her breast.

She has a split second of panic and confusion before it all comes back to her: the mixer, the walk home, the bar, and Jughead.

 _Jughead._ Yeah. The guy from the hallway outside Wolfe’s office, the film student, the other person who was vying for his committee membership. The guy with the floppy hair and the hat and the disarming grin; the one whose body is currently spooned behind her, also naked. The man whose hands played her body like a violin, not once but twice.

 _Three times,_ she suddenly thinks, as her eyes fall on the messy desk in the corner of the bedroom, the one with the worryingly erratic cork board hanging above. Betty has a brief innocent memory of teasing him - _can I get you some red string, Jughead? -_ before her face warms with vague embarrassment at the more vivid memory of her elbows digging into a pile of uncorrected papers as Jughead stands behind her with his hands bruising her hips.

Betty fights the urge to groan into the pillow. _God, who am I,_ she wants to scream, having a one night stand with someone in, of all the disciplines, _film studies._

 _Veronica will be proud,_ a voice from the back of her head tells her, one that sounds suspiciously like Veronica herself.

Jughead moves behind her, stretching and contracting his long body with the unmistakable motions of someone waking up. The hand that’s holding her breast squeezes unexpectedly, eliciting a gasp from Betty that she’d not intended on releasing. His fingers tug at her nipple with a lazy sort of eagerness (which _god,_ feels pretty good, if her thighs will shift just so, she can _almost -)_ until all of a sudden they’re gone, and he’s rolling away.

“Shit, sorry,” he curses. He takes the bedding with him as he does so, leaving her curled naked with the blankets at her hips, then again says, “Fuck, I’m _really_ sorry,” and covers her quickly.

Betty turns onto her back and takes care to secure his duvet at her chest before sitting up as well. “It’s okay,” she says, more by way of reflex than anything.

Jughead looks somewhat panicked but mostly - _ashamed,_ she registers - which is a surprise, until her brain swims into place and she realizes that he’s apologizing for groping her, an action that she hadn’t exactly minded.

“It’s okay on both counts,” she clarifies.

He looks at her, his eyes tired but alive with a conflict of emotions that Betty can’t quite read. He gives a small nod and smile of relief, then flicks his eyes away from her face and says, “I should’ve - if I didn’t tell you last night, Betty, you’re really beautiful.”

Betty blushes at the compliment, still not quite secure with how to properly respond when people say things like that, and she ducks her head. “Thank you,” she says quietly, smiling at him. “But you did tell me.”

When he’d said it last night, she’d responded with much less awkwardness, she thinks. They’d stumbled into his bedroom, with her skirt already half-unzipped and his sweater fisted in his hand (that fucking sweater, the one that made his jawline look razor-sharp, the nice knit that she now knows looks even better off of him). They had disengaged so that she could push her skirt down and hurriedly pull her tights off, then she’d dropped her cardigan somewhere on his floor and turned to face him in her camisole and underwear.

He’d been staring at her with what was almost reverence, and instead of scaring her, it had only excited her further. “You’re gorgeous,” he’d then breathed, before kissing her. He’d repeated the sentiment in some sort of format whenever they’d break for air - _you’re gorgeous, so beautiful, are you even real,_ and even _baby your tits -_ and every single time, she’d responded with a thrust of her hips.

(She’d formally thanked him later, mouthing the words into his chest on her way down to her knees.)

“Oh. Yeah.” The pinch of embarrassment on Jughead’s face tells Betty that he’s now remembering too. And God help her, it’s kind of cute.

“You’re not too shabby yourself,” Betty tells him, sensing the insecurity inherent in his compliment. She means it, too: he’s all smooth skin and gangly limbs with surprising strength and a big, teasing mouth, one whose handiwork she can feel tight on her neck.

Jughead turns red again, but he shifts on the bed a little and extends an arm toward her. “C’mere,” he says softly.

She slides over, the sheets soft on her skin, and props herself up on her palm. “Hi,” she greets, liking the tender expression in his eyes. She hadn’t planned any of this, but - now that she’s _here,_ with this nice guy and good memories, she may as well indulge.

Betty lets the duvet drop from her chest and kisses him, slowly at first but then with intention, breaking the kiss only when her back hits the sheets and his lips migrate to her collarbone.

 _Okay,_ she thinks, _five more minutes, indeed._

-  
-  
-  
-

He gets her off two more times, once with his mouth and once with her riding him. He kisses her through her second orgasm of the morning - she’d been rather loud with her first, which seems to have made him slightly nervous. She doesn’t ask him about it while getting dressed, deciding unilaterally that he probably has sensitive neighbours, but she does squeal happily when he tugs her onto the bed before she leaves.

“Jughead, I have to get home,” she says warningly, even as she parts her legs for his wandering hands.

Jughead immediately acquiesces, dropping his palm from her bare thigh. She’s definitely Ubering home, so she hasn’t bothered wrestling with her tights, instead choosing to shove them inside her purse. There’s a distinct possibility they’re ripped anyway; she’ll have to deal with it later.

“Okay,” he says, swinging his legs off the bed. He pulls on jeans and a t-shirt, a plain one with a faded letter S adorning the front. “I’ll walk you down.”

Betty nods and waits for him to put socks on before opening his bedroom door. “I had a lot of fun,” she tells him, walking backward into the hallway. “We should -”

“Good morning kids.”

Betty nearly jumps out of her skin at the sound of a male voice - a distantly familiar voice, she barely registers. She whirls around and sees a man sitting at the small kitchen table at the end of the apartment hallway. He _looks_ familiar, too, and as she struggles to place him, Jughead appears behind her.

“Dad,” he says, surprised. “Isn’t - don’t you have - um - work today?”

“Not until four,” the man - Jughead’s father, apparently - says with what can only be described as a gleeful expression on his face. “I was going to ask how the party thing went at school, but - hang on.” He leans forward, peering down the darkened hallway at Betty, then says with surprise, “Elizabeth?”

Betty’s eyes open wider. The realization of who he is hits her like a punch to the gut. “FP,” she greets in a weak voice. “Um. Hi.” She turns to Jughead, whose confusion is evident on his face, and says, “FP is in my literature discussion group.”

“Are you _serious?”_

“Jug, remember I told you about Elizabeth, she helped me when I had problems with the readings? This is her! Come sit, have some breakfast,” FP suggests, standing up from the table and waving her down the hallway. “You kids want eggs?”

Betty’s deeply ingrained manners take her down the hallway and into the kitchen before she can even think about it. Jughead dutifully pulls a chair out for her, looking somewhat green. When she bends to sit in it, he hisses in her ear, “You’re my dad’s _TA?”_

“She sure is,” FP continues in his cheerful tone, apparently having overheard. “You’re awesome,” he tells Betty. “Really helped me out. Very patient with an old man like me,” he jokes.

Despite the painful, intense awkwardness of the situation, hearing that warms Betty’s heart, and she gives him a genuine smile. “I’m really glad to hear that, FP, thank you.”

“Thank _you,_ I’d be failing otherwise.” He cracks more eggs into the pan on the stove. “Actually, I was going to ask for your help on the _Death on the Nile_ paper. I’m kind of stuck on -”

Jughead, who had sat down diagonally from Betty and immediately dropped his head into his hands, lifts it long enough to interrupt. “Dad, maybe now is not the best time.”

FP looks confused as to why, if his TA is here, he shouldn’t ask for help on his paper. It seems not to matter to him that Betty is here because she’s just spent the night with his son, though there’s a teasing glint in his eye that tells her he’s not unhappy about that fact. Still, he drops the subject easily.

“Okay,” he says. “Do you kids want runny yolks?”

-  
-  
-  
-

Betty finally gets home to her apartment at noon, two hours after she’d woken up in Jughead’s bed and one hour after one of her favourite students had made them breakfast.

Because he’d been there.

Because he was Jughead’s father.

Because she’d _slept_ with the _son_ of one of her _students._

The entire situation, and how she had fallen into it, is nearly incomprehensible to Betty. She’s lived her life as the near epitome of the careless man’s careful daughter made famous by the philosopher Swift (if of course her father could ever manage to be anything other than carelessly _dull_ both in theory and in fact, Alice Cooper hisses in her head). And yet here she is, hung over, tired, and sore. She wants a shower so badly that her walk of shame is barely registering in her mind as something to dwell on.

Unfortunately, when she arrives at the pricy loft she can only afford to live in because it’s owned by her roommate’s father, that roommate - Veronica, a girl she’d met in her undergrad in New York and now one of her best friends - is waiting for her.

And she’s _gleeful._

“Baby _B,”_ Veronica exclaims, rising immediately from the tidy armchair she’d been perched in whilst drinking coffee and doing the _Times’_ Saturday crossword. True to form, she’s in silk pajamas and full face, complete with a bold, dramatic lip colour that is somehow not transferring onto the mug beside her chair. “Welcome home. Here, come sit.”

“I’m tired, Veronica,” Betty tries to tell her, but it’s no use. Veronica on a mission is an unstoppable force, someone truly to be given into, not brushed aside.

“Tired from your long night of hot sex, I hope,” she quips, sailing over to the kitchen and reaching for a second coffee mug.

Betty drops her bag on the floor and says nothing. Her silence, she knows, is all the confirmation that Veronica needs.

Veronica whirls around, her jaw dropped, excitement in her eyes. “You little _slut!”_ she praises, resting her elbows on the kitchen island and settling her chin in her hands. “I am so proud of you. Tell me _everything.”_

Betty groans. “Do we have to do this now?” She pinches the bridge of her nose. “I’m gross, and my head hurts.”

“I’ll get the ibuprofen,” Veronica volunteers, “and you don’t smell. And _yes,_ we have to do this now. You have like - at least three hickeys, and I can barely see your collarbone.” She pours expensive dark roast into the mug she’d procured, hands it to Betty, and then disappears down the hallway to the bathroom with instructions for her to get comfortable.

Betty takes the mug and wanders into their living room, having been friends with Veronica long enough to know that this will be over more quickly if she just acquiesces, and sinks onto the couch. She accepts the pills and water that are brought to her a few moments later, when Veronica returns, then takes a long sip of coffee and begins to recount her night.

Once she gets to the morning, Betty feels the too-recent sting of embarrassment rising in her face. She drops her head into her hands and mumbles, “His dad lives with him. And V, you will never believe this, but his dad is in one of my discussion groups at school.”

The quirk of confusion crosses Veronica’s face briefly, then realization dawns. “Oh, he’s a mature student?”

“Yes.” Betty rubs her face and lifts it again, locking eyes with her friend in desperation, as if imploring her to help in any way. “How am I supposed to face him on Monday?”

“Is he an asshole?”

“No, he’s a nice guy. I - I think it’s a sort of fresh-start kind of situation,” Betty says carefully, because even though she knows now that FP is an ex-convict, that’s not anyone else’s business.

Veronica considers this information carefully, her perfectly done nails drumming on the curve of her mug. “So if you like him, and you like the son - Jughead - then … I don’t see the problem, B. _Unless_ you don’t want to see Jughead again, in which case, yeah that’s a little awkward.”

Betty presses her lips together and shrugs miserably. “I mean, we had a really great time, and he … we’re really different, I think, but he seems - I’d see him again,” she stammers. “I think.”

“Then don’t worry about it!” Veronica’s eyes are twinkling as she leans back into her armchair. She grins devilishly. “Well, well, B. My little Betty, home at _noon_ in yesterday’s clothes after an apparently _very_ satisfactory evening.”

“I’m familiar with the day’s events, thanks Veronica,” Betty says dryly. “Can I go to bed now?”

Veronica sighs dramatically. “If you must,” she allows. “But first, _I_ met a very interesting guy last night, too. It didn’t go nearly as well as your night - _clearly -_ but he’s pretty hot and I think I might go on a date with him next week.” She leans forward conspiratorially. “And get this - he’s a _ginger.”_

  
-  
-  
-  
-

to be continued.


End file.
